[BlueOnyx:03069] PHP exec() and ImageMagick

[Darrell D. Mobley]

CentOS has ImageMagick 6.2.8 installed by default. A website I run on a BX
server can use either GD or ImageMagick.  ImageMagick's invocation in this
website uses exec().  BX has exec() disabled in php.ini by default:

disable_functions =
exec,system,passthru,shell_exec,proc_open,proc_nice,ini_restore

I see that exec is a security risk.  Is there a suggested alternative that I
could modify the PHP code with to use instead of exec()?